Breakable
by Maja Elisabeth
Summary: Now I know my heart is breakable - Mac/Stella - Set after 2.21 All Access. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

_**Yeah yeah, I know I said I wouldn't post anything in a while.  
But I got this idea when I listened to a old song. It made me remember some stuff, and how it was back then.  
It has nothing to do with the situation Stella is in now but anyway. Enough of this drabble.**_

_**Not betaed.  


* * *

**_

His heart ran wild in his chest when he saw the two bodies lying on the floor.  
What if he was too late? The guilt felt like something similar as being stabbed by a knife, hard.  
"Stella!" he shouted and ran towards her petite figure. "Stella, can you hear me?"  
The only thing he could hear was his heavy intakes of breath, and the loud hammering of his own heart when he tried to listen after sounds that would indicate that she was alive.

Mac dabbed her cheek lightly, he could feel her cold skin against his palm. When she didn't respond he bit his lower lip, hoping that he wouldn't feel the pain as the teeth dug in to his lip and tongue.  
Hoping that his just was a nightmare that he soon would wake up from – he would open his eyes and see his white ceiling in his apartment, and feel how his T-shirt, damp from the sweat, clinging on his back.

But no, he felt his teeth against his lip; the pain slowly took over his whole mouth.  
Just to be sure this was true, he bit down again, this time harder; and now he could taste the blood, a little bit salty because of the sodium and iron.

First Claire, and now Stella, he thought and removed his hands from her cold cheeks and placed them on her shoulders.

Mac shook her gently, but this time hard enough to make her eyes flutter open.  
He stared thankful in her eyes when she opened them to look at him.  
He saw in her green eyes how scared and hurt she was, it was like her eyes had already seen too much of this world.  
The spark in her eyes was gone, Frankie sure hadn't killed her, but he'd killed her inner light. Her sparkle, her lust to life.  
He could see it in her eyes that she'd was glad he was here, but still the sparkle was gone.  
Her eyes closed again, like she didn't want to see this anymore.

"Help me Mac" she whispered, barely audible, but enough for him to hear her begging words for rescue. "Please"  
His heart almost broke when he heard her vulnerable voice, asking him for help.  
Stella's hand sought his and held on like he would disappear if she didn't, while they waited for the paramedics to arrive.

"Hold on Stella" he whispered and squeezed her hand lightly to show her that he was here, and that he wasn't planning on leaving.  
She responded with a soft murmur, he didn't know if she tried to say something, or if it just was a sound. But he nodded and stroked her soft, curly bloodstained hair in response.

xXx

She must have been tied down… Mac thought when he examined the bathtub.  
He kneeled down and found the razors Stella had cut the strings that kept her hands held behind her back.  
The two razorblades where put down in a brown paper bag that rustled whenever you took it, and it was sealed with red evidence tape.  
The red blood in the bathtub where even more red against the white fiberglass and white tile on the bathroom wall, decorated with small seashells.

Little by little Mac had managed to gather all the pieces of the puzzle together, and now was the only thing left to get the whole picture.  
As he tried to solve the puzzle, the picture grew bigger and Mac knew what'd been going on in Stella's apartment.  
He felt sick to his stomach when he thought about all the things Frankie had done with her.  
Even if he would do anything not to know, for he knew he would have these images glued onto his retina twenty four – seven, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.  
He had to continue working, for Mac knew Stella wouldn't want anyone else but him on this case.

He had to continue. For her.

_**

* * *

**_

_**And btw, the song is 'I remember love' by Sarah Dawn Finer. I would guess it's pretty hard to find. But on YT I'm sure.**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Hello!  
Yeah, said I would take it easy, but NEXT week it's vacation, and I'm so happy!!  
Because we had the physics test today, the two economics tests a few days ago, and NOW it's finished! SO nice.**_

_**and yeaaa. I know it was Flack who talked to Stella, but that's SO less Smacked, so I replaced Don with Mac and you know I can do that!  
Because this is fiction! And I can do whatever I like to!**_

_**Thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter, your words makes me melt :3**_

_**Still not betaed. Try to survive..  
**_

"How are you doing?" Mac asked and looked up from behind a bunch of flowers.  
He smiled shyly at Stella who was lying, or half sitting up in the hospital bed, dressed in a white hospital gown.  
All the white things around her, the blankets, the gown, the bed and the walls made her look even smaller and paler than she actually was.  
The cut under her left eye had been stitched up and a plaster wandered across her cheek and covered most of it.

"I'm alive" she stated, and shrugged. Mac noticed that her green eyes were still powerless, and the spark was nowhere to be found. He knew it would take a while to get it back, even though he wasn't sure if it ever would do.  
He nodded, and put the flowers down on the table opposite to her.  
Stella played nervously with the hem of her gown; her fingertips were covered in plasters because she cut herself with the razorblades, while trying to get rid of the strings that attached her hands behind her back in the bathtub.  
Mac sat down on a chair next to her bed, the chair made scraping sounds against the cold floor when he moved out the chair to sit down.

"I know what you are going to ask me now Mac" she sighed. "But I'm sorry, I don't remember that much. There's something's that I can remember, and there's something's I just can't" Stella shrugged.  
"It's okay Stella" Mac placed a hand over hers to sooth her, but she pulled away as if she would have burned herself on the stove.  
Mac became puzzled, she'd never done this before, and he pretended not to be hurt by her actions.  
Stella tensed when she realized what she'd done. She just reacted on instinct.  
"Sorry Mac" she stammered. "I didn't mean to-"  
"No Stella" he cut her off. "It's okay, I shouldn't have…"  
She nodded and looked down at the white blanket.

"I guess I should tell you what I remember…" she tried to switch topic as lightly as possible.  
"That would be helpful" Mac agreed.  
"But I'm sure you have a pretty good idea of what happened to me" Stella shrugged.  
"A little bit, yes" he nodded.  
"All I remember was that I came home after I went shopping" she paused, and Mac gave her a look to encourage her to continue. "And, the lights were on, and I thought it was odd, because I don't leave them on."  
Stella fell silent, as she tried to remember what happened next.  
"Then I saw him"  
"Frankie?" Mac asked.  
She inhaled a shaky breath and continued.  
"Yeah, Frankie" Mac saw how tears were forming in the corners of her eyes, and she tried desperately to blink them away, for she didn't want Mac to see that she cried. "He'd made me dinner…" she sniffled.  
Mac waited patiently as she tried discreetly to wipe away her tears.  
"It's okay to cry Stella" he assured her, but she just shrugged.  
"And then, everything went black" she shook her head. "I just remember bits and pieces, and nothing more. I just remember that it was… awful… and he had a knife…-" her voice faded away.  
"It's okay" Mac assured her, and patted her shoulder lightly, this time she didn't tense or tried to get away from his touch. "The evidence will fill in the gaps that you don't remember."  
"I know you know what happened to me Mac" she stated. "Is it something I want to remember?"  
"No, it's not" he sighed.

Stella bit her lower lip, and watched Mac as he sat next to her bed. His eyes were tired, as he hadn't slept for days. Probably he hadn't she thought.  
"Mac, please tell me" she begged.  
"Are you sure you want to know?" Mac touched her hand; she grabbed his hand and squeezed it lightly.  
"I have all these scars and wounds, and I don't even know how I got them…"

Mac sighed, he didn't know which way was the best to tell her.  
He wished that he'd just kept quiet, she might get the memory back if he began to tell her what he'd found, and what Frankie did to her.  
"You were found unconscious on the floor in your living room" Mac begun, and cleared his throat to not let the emotions get over steer. "I thought you we're dead…"  
Stella bit her lower lip and looked over to her partner. Not until now it had become clear to her how scared Mac had been, for her.  
"But I'm not"Stella whispered, she began to stroke his hand with her thumb to somewhat sooth him.  
"You could have been" Mac said quietly. "He had you tied down in the bathtub"  
"My bruises on my wrists came from that?"  
Mac nodded and continued. "You managed to cut the strings with some razorblades, therefore the cuts on your fingertips" he held her hand gently, as not to hurt her wounded fingers.  
"What happened with Frankie?"  
"He…he" Mac stammered, he didn't know how to say it in the best possible way.  
"He what, Mac?"  
"The COD on Frankie was a fatal gunshot to the heart." Mac cleared his throat to gain some more time before start talking, and was hoping that he would come up with something smart to say now.  
"Three shots were fired, the one that hit him was the fatal one."  
"I shot him?" Stella echoed, shocked.  
"I'm sorry Stell. I shouldn't have said anything" Mac suddenly felt very guilt, if he now was responsible for some more damage that could have been prevented for Stella.  
"No Mac, I wanted to know" she assured him, and loosed up the grip on his hand to wipe away some more tears from her eyes.

_**Thanks for reading and please leave a review :D**_

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello!  
Well, I thought : Oh! I have vacation, why not celebrate it with doing the last chapter of Breakable?  
And well, it's almost true, I have vacation, but this isn't the last chapter.  
I divided it in two pieces, because it would have been so long if this would be the last.  
I really wanted to do something short with only three chapters....  
but this is a 4 ch long - thing.. .xD**

Not betaed...

And awwww, thank you all for the wonderful reviews :*

* * *

"Your apartment isn't cleaned yet, it still looks like a crime scene" Mac said and watched Stella as they stood on the sidewalk across the hospital to hail a cab.  
She bit her lower lip, as she considered what to do.  
"I can book a hotel room for you, Park view?" Mac suggested. "Or I have a spare room if you're interested…" he tried as casual as possible to sneak in the fact that he would love her staying at his place, even just for a night.  
He knew she was going through hell the last couple of days, and he wanted to make sure that everything was alright with her.  
"It's okay Mac" she sighed "I'm a big girl; I can take care of myself"  
"Okay" Mac said trying not to sound disappointed as she had turned down his suggestions'. Both of them.  
"I just want to go home" she shivered a little bit at the thought, but sometimes you have to face what you're most afraid of.  
"I understand" Mac nodded.  
"Thanks for everything Mac" Stella said, and carefully pecked his cheek with her lips as a thank you.  
Mac couldn't help but smile as he felt her lips against his cheek.  
"You're welcome Stella" he smiled, and opened the car door to the yellow cab for her, and helped her in.  
"Stay safe" she whispered as he closed the door and turned around to walk home.

Stella opened the door to her apartment, and slowly entered.  
She was prepared to see her home as a crime scene, but no, it still came as a shock to see her living room as the center of the crime scene.  
In the living room was most of the furniture tipped over, I must have put up a hell of a fight, she thought as she began to put the furniture back in place again.  
Bloodstains covered the whole floor at some parts of the living room.  
She shivered; Stella didn't know whose blood it was. Was it hers or Frankie's?  
And where did I shoot him? She thought. I shot him, Stella inhaled a shaky breath and let go of it in the same moment.

The whole world was spinning around her; the walls of her apartment seemed to come closer to her, and were slowly trying to trap her.  
Her nails were digging into her palm, as she stood there and tried to focus on the pain instead of the small feeling of loneliness and emptiness in her heart that only seemed to grow bigger as she stood there in her living room with her nails in her palms.  
She felt the pain, it wasn't a dream. She felt the sweat running down her back.  
And now, Stella felt more alone than ever.  
Why didn't she accept the offer Mac gave her?

She shook her head.  
Stella always thought she could handle every situation she was put it, but no, she'd just proven the opposite.

She had shot her boyfriend.  
Her teeth dug deep in her lower lip as she tried to suppress a sob.

He had her helplessly tied her wrists and placed her in the bathtub, what if she didn't had placed the razorblades on the edge of bathtub? She would have been dead.  
What if Frankie would know more about guns?  
He could have shot her right there and then. She would have been dead.

Stella quietly sobbed, and looked around, she thought she could handle the cleaning job by herself.  
But no, it felt like she had to turn around and look over her shoulder every time she heard a strange noise.  
She didn't feel safe in her own apartment.  
Shivers ran down her spine, and her shirt was all damp by the sweat running down her back.

Everything came back to her in small glimpses; the feeling of not being able to rescue herself with her wrists tied together. The pain of the razorblades.  
The panic of being trapped.  
Being forced to do something you're not comfortable with; add that with a knife pressed to your throat ready to cut whenever you make resistance.

Her apartment didn't feel like her home, it felt like a regular crime scene.  
She thought she couldn't be able to sit in her couch and watch TV anymore, she would just think about what happened on the floor in her living room.  
Even if the blood and antiseptic smell of luminol would be gone, Stella would still remember where every bloodstain had been.  
How her furniture had been when she entered the room.

But most of all, she would remember the fear.  
The fear of not being able to rescue her from the situation she had put herself in.  
And thereafter the realization that nothing she could do would bring them both alive out from this room.

Small tears were now escaping from her eyes.  
Quickly brushing away her tears, she felt a little bit annoyed and embarrassed – she wasn't supposed to cry.  
It was bad enough that Mac almost had seen her broke down yesterday.  
She wanted to prove to him that she didn't need the babying.  
But now, the only thing she proves is the contrast of it, like it was printed in white on a black piece of paper.

"I can't be here any longer" Stella spoke out loud, as to convince herself of doing the right thing to leave her apartment.  
The bag Mac had brought her with her own clothes to the hospital stood behind the door where she'd left it when she came home.  
Hastily she grabbed the black bag and held it tight, as she was afraid of dropping it when she fled down the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator,  
where she might meet some of her neighbors, and then she might have to explain the noises that came from her apartment a few days ago.  
The old lady Johnson in the apartment next to Stella tried to stop her as she ran down the stairs with the bag clutched so hard in her hands so the seams cut marks in her palms.  
"Excuse me, but I got to go" she quickly waved aside the lady's question about the police's in her apartment the days before.

Stella pushed on the doorbell with shaky hands, the sound of the bell seemed to be much louder than she was used to.  
The echoing sound rang throughout the whole stairwell.  
The annoying sound could easily have woken up the neighborhood in the radius of five kilometers by now, she thought.  
Stella had no idea or what so ever about what the time was, she just hoped that she wasn't disturbing something.  
Something called sleep, because when she last saw him, he really looked like he needed some.  
Feeling slightly uncomfortable, she shifted her weight to the left foot instead of the right, she considered if it was for the best of leaving.  
Three minutes had passed since she pushed the bell.  
Stella had been counting every second she'd stood there and waiting for him to open the door.  
To see his calm and soothing face, she needed him to convince her that everything was alright.

But no…?  
He might be asleep; three minutes and forty-five seconds had now passed.  
And it's a good thing that he's asleep, he needs it.  
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she turned around on her heels, feeling a little bit crestfallen as he didn't answer the door, and began to walking towards the elevator.

"Stella?"

* * *

**....and there I will stop writing! *hihi***

Thanks for reading, and please leave a review on your way out, it'll only take like seconds for you!  
I mean, it took more than seconds for me to write, so I would be glad to hear if you liked it!


	4. Chapter 4

Okay! Last chapter now!  
Thanks to: _suallenparker, Asprine, Svufan4ever, Hazmatt, CsiKane, gurlz, ewriter, JackSam, Mini Librarian and QueenEm_ for the reviews which made this fic running.  
Thanks for everyting.

* * *

"Stella?" Mac watched as she flinched by his words and slowly turned around to face him.  
She gasped at the sight of Mac, standing there in the doorway with a pair of sweats on and an old worn out tshirt.  
He rubbed his eyes as help them to adjust to the strong light in the stairwell.  
Clearly she'd wake him up.  
A wash of guilt flooded over her, she knew how hard Mac found it to go to sleep without Claire beside him. Not that he had said it out loud, but she could imagine.  
After spending several years sleeping beside one person, it must be hard to found that no one is beside you anymore when you wake up in the morning.  
Now he'd managed to go to bed, and now she was ruining his whole idea of sleeping.

"I woke you up" she stated and shrugged, unsure if she would just step into the elevator and press the button and go home again.  
Stella shivered at the thought by going home - to the crime scene, to the blood spatter, to the … to where all her memories that haunted mind her was.  
"Never mind Stella" he replied and blinked his eyes as he didn't had adjusted them to the light yet. "It's okay"  
"Are you sure?" she asked and let her hands play nervously with her scarf.  
"Of course I am" he smiled. "I'm glad you came"  
"You are?" she smiled shyly.  
"Here, come in" he reached out his hand as a welcome for her to come in.  
"Thank you" she whispered.  
She took his hand, and Mac smiled as he felt her soft hand in his.  
"Come here" he said, and led her to the couch in the living room. "Do you want anything to drink?"  
"No Mac, it's fine" she smiled shyly at him.  
"Okay" he sat down beside her on the couch.  
Her hand sought his and Mac let her hold on to his hand while the silence surrounded them.  
Mac shuddered as the soft skin of her hand met his.

"Mac…" Stella broke the silence, and he looked up.  
He had been mesmerized by the thought of holding her hand, and apparently blind also.  
When he raised his gaze, he found small tears escaping from Stella's eyes.  
"I…I" she sobbed.  
"It's okay Stella" his heart almost broke by only the sight of her being so hurt and vulnerable.  
In a desperate try to comfort her, he scooped her up in his arms.  
He felt her twist and shiver in his arms.  
Mac's hand rubbed his lower back to sooth her.  
He felt body relax, but continued to make soft strokes on her back.  
"I should have-"  
"You did the right thing Stella" Mac tried to convince her, she didn't need more feelings of guilt that she already had.  
"How can murder be the right thing?!" she released herself from his arms, and Mac felt the cool air hit the warm spots on his arms where Stella had been.  
"Murder is never the right thing" she hissed. "We work our asses off every day to convince people that murder is wrong, and that the criminal should end up in jail!"  
"It was self defense!"  
"But Mac, I-" she bit her lower lip.  
"Stella you can't blame yourself for this…"  
She'd turned away from him, but he could see that she cried, in the way her shoulders shook.  
"Shh… Stella don't cry" he slowly approached her, and put his arms around her.  
"If Frankie knew more about guns I would've been dead by now" she stated, tears were still running down her cheeks, and Mac reached out his thumb to catch them.  
"I told myself not to cry…" she mumbled and removed his hand from her face, and started to wipe away her tears with the sleeve in a hasty movement.  
"It's okay Stella" his grip on her shoulders tightened.  
"It's time to face it Mac, I am breakable, I am weak, I can't be that-"  
"Stella, don't ever say something like that!" Mac hissed, he hated to see her like this. "Everyone's breakable"  
"I-"  
"Let me finish first" Mac said to her when she tried to interrupt. "Even the best fall down sometimes and sure it hurts, but you are going to get through that."

"I'll be here when you wake up" Mac stroked her hair, and tucked her in.  
"Good night Mac" Stella whispered.  
"Sleep well" Mac rose from the bed in his guestroom.  
"How long can I stay?" he heard her voice barely audible from inside the room.  
"As long as you want to"

**End. **


End file.
